When
the California Supreme Court declared in a 4 to 3 ruling in May that
California must allow homosexuals to marry under the same terms and
conditions as heterosexuals, they caricatured the arguments against
gay marriage as bigoted and unconstitutional. Nevermind that the voters
in California overwhelming voted down gay marriage – “equality”
trumps tradition, especially when you'll be hailed by the New York Times
for your "historic" and "momentus" courage in this
"victory for equality and justice."

The
most useful part of this ruling is that it exposes a fatal flaw in the
arguments conservatives have consistently brought forth, in jurisprudence
and in legislation, to defend conservative ideals against assault from
the left. Useful, that is, if we learn from it. Our strategy for protecting
marriage was destined for failure from the beginning, just as is our
strategy to fix public education, protect the preborn from death by
abortion, and restore our God-given liberties. It's a bitter pill, but
the diagnosis of severe maladies is always a bitter pill that must be
swallowed before the remedy becomes palatable.

Under
the political leadership of those anointed by conservative groups, we
have:

1.
Accepted "civil unions" as an alternative to gay marriage,

2.
Reformed public education by increasing the funding of the government
bureaucracy and programs that foster sexual immorality among school
children,

3.
Promoted a "culture of life" by regulating the child-killing
and justifying abortion in cases of rape, incest, and maternal health,

4.
Increased the size, power, and expense of the centralized government,
and expanded the state's usurpation of parental rights.

And
these were our successes! All this happened under the leadership of
those politicians strongly endorsed by conservative Christian leaders.
It's not the homosexual movement that is destroying marriage. It's the
heterosexuals that have destroyed marriage, with gay marriage is riding
in our wake.

The
strategy of pragmatism will inevitably bring us defeat, even if we win
every election! With this standard of success, the "lesser of two
evils" is destined to gravitate to more and more evil. Incremental
legislation that gradually reaches our goals may work as long as we
are incrementally reaching our goals; on the contrary, we find ourselves
incrementally sacrificing our liberties on the inevitable road to a
Marxist empire. Instead of restoring liberties lost, conservatives are
content to "conserve" what we have, or too frequently, content
to lose less than the Democrats would have it.

Appeals
to pragmatism and tradition work when the democratic consensus is on
your side, but thanks to forty years of public education, the democratic
consensus is evolving away from our Christian traditions. Moreover,
the judiciary is not a good cross-section of society and, as this California
case reveals, what works in the voting booth is less likely to work
in the courthouse. The California Supreme Court that handed down this
despicable decision was full of Republican appointees. The Massachusetts
Supreme Court that gave us gay marriage was full of Republican appointees.
The Supreme Court that gave us Roe v. Wade, that removed the Bible and
prayers from public schools, that said states could not criminalize
homosexual sodomy, had majorities that were Republican appointees. It
has been under Republican leadership that we have witnessed the church-sanctioned
institution of marriage undermined in favor of state-regulated civil
marriage, and we have seen the judiciary deny the obligation and constitutional
right of states to ban sexual conduct that is harmful to the public
good.

The
Bible says, "When the wicked rule, the people mourn" - all
our traditions and good legislation notwithstanding. A society's laws
and public institutions are only as wholesome as our leadership's will
in maintaining and enforcing them.

I'm
convinced that all the fuss from conservatives about protecting traditional
marriage from "gay marriage" is a façade, little more
than a fund-raising tool. Conservatives abandoned marriage long, long
ago. No fault divorce was an invention of the Bolsheviks in Russia in
1917, when they, for want of a godless society, replaced church-sanctioned
marriage with the civil institution of marriage sanctioned by the state.
It was under California Governor Ronald Reagan's leadership that "no-fault
divorce" entered the United States when he signed the Family Law
Act in 1969. From the social cesspool where we presently reside, it
is hard to imagine a woman legally obligated to stay with a bad husband.
Short of adultery, divorce is not justifiable in Scripture and our courts
did not allow divorce except for adultery or extreme abuse. Up until
California under Reagan's leadership, that is.

Was
that an obstacle for Governor Reagan to attain rock-star status in the
Republican Party? Not at all. Then under Reagan's leadership, we got
the fulfillment of his promise to appoint a woman to the Supreme Court:
Sandra Day O'Connor. Under her leadership the Court perpetuated legal
abortion in key judicial decisions when all was right for Roe v. Wade
to be toppled and the preborn finally protected. For example, she voted
in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey in 1992 to uphold Roe v. Wade, as did
another Reagan appointee Anthony Kennedy and the first President Bush
appointee David Souter. She also joined with Souter in concurring with
the 6-3 ruling in the landmark Lawrence vs. Texas ruling in 2003 in
which the Supreme Court disallowed states from criminalizing sodomy.
We rejoice in Reagan's more conservative appointments, but even Scalia
and Thomas refuse to recognize the preborn child's right to live in
the Constitution.[1]

Under
the leadership of the Bushes, we got more tax-subsidization for Planned
Parenthood, the leading proponent of homosexual experimentation and
early sexual activity, condom distribution, chemical contraception without
parental consent, and when all that fails, abortion without parental
consent. It was Planned Parenthood that led the charge against Texas'
anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence vs. Texas. George W. Bush appointed more
homosexual activists to government positions than any previous president.[2]
He campaigned beside his Vice President's lesbian daughter and publicly
endorsed "civil unions," which is basically marriage by another
name.[3]
Under Republican budgets, government-controlled education continued
to employ the guidelines designed by Planned Parenthood and the Sexuality
Education Information Council of the U.S. (SIECUS) for early sexual
education in public school - teaching children that mutual masturbation
and oral sex with a condom is "safer sex."[4]
Republican budgets continue to give more welfare money to a pregnant
woman or single mom if she remains single; what is this but financing
fornication? All of this, plus a record amount of budgetary pork and
earmarks, mind you, generously paid for by the taxpayers in our Republican
budgets.

To
gain the support of conservatives, all we required was their pro-family,
pro-life rhetoric. George Bush bowed his head to pray, and we fell into
a swoon; he gave over 200 million to Planned Parenthood every year and
we crucified his conservative critics as irrelevant idealists and religious
wackos. We were so intoxicated with the kiss on the cheek that we couldn't
hear the thirty pieces of silver jingling in his pockets.

The
Supreme Court justices we gained under the leadership of the Bushes
were par for the course: Roberts had done pro bono work to support gay
rights causes [5],
and Alito had previous ruled New Jersey's Partial Birth Abortion Ban
unconstitutional and cited Roe v. Wade approvingly in the process.[6]
But hey, his grandmother said he was pro-life, so we were convinced.
After all, Bush appointed him, and Bush was pro-life, right?

Conservatives
were all in an uproar when the Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas
in 2003 that the constitution disallowed states from prosecuting homosexual
sodomy. But what conservative group was previously endorsing the enforcement
of Texas' anti-sodomy law? Was Focus on the Family encouraging the prosecution
of sodomites in Texas? Was Family Research Council criticizing the reluctance
of Texas' leadership to prosecute sexual deviants in accordance with
state law? Anybody? Was the ACLJ, the Heritage Foundation, or Concerned
Women for America encouraging states to defy judicial activists and
re-criminalize sodomites and adulterers to protect marriage? Which conservative
leader has publicly insisted that candidates commit to outlaw sexual
behavior that is harmful to the public good with a penalty sufficient
to discourage the crime, as God instructs in His Word? Was any noteworthy
pro-life group like National Right to Life publicly committing not to
support any candidate who did not defund Planned Parenthood and SIECUS
and defy the unconstitutional and immoral Roe vs. Wade decision and
prosecute all murderers of preborn children? What was the conservative'
remedy for our 50% divorce rate, for the social tragedy of over half
of our babies being born to unmarried parents with its predictable increase
in crime, drugs, and poverty?

We're
a nation of polygamists, America - we just don't have a lifelong commitment
to the mates with whom we copulate. When the politicians that conservatives
endorsed were in charge of the executive, the judicial, and the legislative
branches of government, how did they remedy these social tragedies?
For that matter, what did the church propose? We have to face it: our
remedy for our nation's ills was more of the disease (although perhaps
less of it that the democrats proposed). Our candidates were the lesser
of two plagues.

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The
typical conservative's argument against "gay marriage" is
as follows: "What gays do in the privacy of their own home is their
business, but when they propose to change the definition of marriage
to accommodate homosexual activity, it affects us all and we must intervene
to protect traditional marriage." Do you realize how this argument
stands in opposition to the Word of God, which says that homosexuality
is an abomination to God and is criminal? What is the basis of right
and wrong? Our democratic consensus? Our traditions? What is the basis
of justice? What someone does in the privacy of their own home should
matter to us if they engage in activity that God says in his Word is
criminal, for which activity He has destroyed entire cities in the Bible.

In
the same way, the mainstream pro-life movement's remedy for abortion
on demand makes us accomplices in the crime. In our arguments against
one type of late term abortion, against abortions performed on minor
mothers without parental consent, in our arguments for twenty-four hour
waiting periods and mandatory ultrasounds, and in our endorsement of
candidates who continue to fund Planned Parenthood or who justify abortion
in cases of rape, incest, maternal health, and fetal handicap, we become
accomplices in all the abortions that our legislation and legislators
justify.

Jesus,
in Matthew 7, said that we were not to judge another if we were guilty
of the same thing. Don't try to take the speck out of your neighbor's
eye, He said, if you have a log in your own. In verses 3 through 5,
He said that we first should clean up our own act and then we can see
clearly to help our neighbor. In our opposition to gay marriage, conservatives
are hypocrites: with our tax-payer finances prophylactics for fornicators,
with our apathy about legal adultery and homosexual sodomy, and with
our no-fault divorces and our remarriages - all of which are much more
of a threat to traditional marriage than "gay marriage."

If
we could only see clearly, as Jesus said, it would be so much easier
to take the mote out of our neighbor's eye. What the California Supreme
Court did not realize, and what the conservative defenders of marriage
were reluctant to show them, is that homosexuals can already marry.
They just can't marry each other. There's nothing unlawful about a homosexual
man marrying a homosexual woman. What is forbidden homosexuals is the
same thing forbidden heterosexuals - there is no inequality here. Neither
homosexuals nor heterosexuals can marry whoever or whatever they want.
Homosexuals and heterosexuals alike are not allowed to redefine marriage
to pervert it, nor are they allowed to legalize that which the Creator
has outlawed. God is the source of right and wrong, and He has not amended
His law to adapt to the prevailing perversions of the day.

But
if the standard of God's law were brought forth as an argument against
gay marriage, our hypocrisy would have been our undoing. Both homosexuality
and adultery are capital crimes in the Old Testament, you see, and both
acts are re-affirmed as sins in the New Testament. The remarriage of
a divorced adulterer that resulted from adultery was another act of
adultery.[7]
Unfortunately, rather than repent of our own heterosexual abominations,
we have sought to preserve our moral superiority over those that we
deemed more degenerate than we. So we kept the sword of the Lord, which
is the Word of God, in its sheathe and we resorted to pragmatic arguments
based upon compromised principles that are just as much an affront to
the Creator as they are to our homosexual opponents.

To
restore civil justice and God-given liberties, to protect marriage,
and to protect the preborn, we must return to the Word of God. The sword
of the Lord is our offensive weapon against spiritual wickedness (Ephesians
6). Our standard of success must be His Word and His good pleasure.
Acquiring His favor must transcend any pragmatic standard of electability,
for "without Him we can do nothing." Our nation is doomed
without His blessing, which he gives to nations who serve Him (Psalm
9:17 & 33:12). According to His Word, civil authorities are obligated
to be ministers of God and execute wrath upon them that do evil as our
Creator defines it (Romans 13:3-5). States should prosecute homosexual
acts and adultery in accordance with Biblical mandates, in defiance
of judicial tyranny. Pragmatic doubters be reproved, for "with
God, all things are possible." Politicians and judges are not exempt
from the constraints of God's law, despite their futile attempts to
fight against Him (Psalm 2).

If
the church of Jesus Christ will not lead the way to liberty and justice,
who will? Have we betrayed our dear Savior to be in the good graces
of the 501c3 regulations of the IRS? Have we dulled the two-edged sword
of the Spirit to delight the deniers of God? The Bible says that which
is highly favored among men is an abomination in the sight of God, electability
notwithstanding. The church must be the salt of society, or traditional
marriage will not be preserved and the preborn will continue to be slaughtered
in the name of choice. If we lose our saltiness, Jesus said we are good
for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under the foot of men. Then
the Democrats, the ACLU, and married gay couples will be the least of
our worries, for judgment will first begin at the house of God.

Patrick
Johnston and his wife Elizabeth reside in Zanesville, Ohio, with their
six young home-schooled children. Patrick is a family practice physician
and founder of the Association of Pro-life Physicians, which is dedicated
to restoring a remnant of physicians in our communities who are convinced
that life begins at conception and who will not commit nor refer for abortions
(www.ProLifePhysicians.org).

He
founded the Alliance to Reform Education Funding to fight public school
levies and promote Christian home-schooling (www.StopSchoolLevies.org).
Dr. Johnston is committed to revival in the church, and the restoration
of Biblical law and constitutional government in America. Dr. Johnston
is currently campaigning for State Representative for District 94 in Ohio.
Their family ministry -